380 : William Gasner – Cracking the Instagram Micro Influencer market to gain traction selling on Amazon
How do you get noticed in this fast changing , product launching environment. Are celebrities the answer? Are the major influencers 15 minutes of fame up? Seems so. Seems like getting to the RIGHT audience not matter how small is the key to gaining traction from Instagram influencers. William breaks down the past, current and likely future of this marketing strategy.
Mentioned:
Stackinfluence – William’s Marketing firm
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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.
William: [00:00:00] Google used to be really effective, but now there’s so much competition and depending on your niche, it’s really hard to kind of get up high on Google rankings. Um, and depending on, you need a huge advertising budget to really dominate the first page as well. Facebook has become a good strategy but also becoming very competitive.
Cool voice guy: [00:00:21] Welcome to the ecommerce momentum when we focus on the people, the products, and the process of incomers selling to your host Stephen Peterson,
Stephen: [00:00:35] if you’re ready to set up a strong, reliable accounting system when it’s a real strong foundation for your business. Well, we think we have the answer for you. If this is from accounting, we will go, you’re here listening to us on this podcast. We set up a course and it’s called Amazon accounting. Simplified. Yup. Simple. And we only say Amazon yet it’s really all across ecommerce. We’re talking about integrating quickbooks into your existing or new ecommerce business and new is great because you could set it up right that way, but if you have an existing business, how do you integrate, how do you get quickbooks online specifically? How do you get set up in there? Well, we have modules. There’s over 48 modules that will walk you through each one of those steps. I’m going to talk about cost of goods and I didn’t even talk about it.
Stephen: [00:01:16] We’re going to dive in, parse it, peel it back and help you understand what it takes. How about chart of accounts, setting up the right accounts, ones that you can use to make decisions. We’ve had hundreds of clients and we come up what we see at have seen as the best practice and I think that’s going to be the best thing for you. Reconciling 10 99 from paypal and Amazon. Good luck. Challenging. Well we’re gonna. We have modules, unique modules for each of those because they are unique. And so vendor management, accounting for Amazon loans. It goes on and on. I’m just skimming the top. There’s 48 plus modules and more will be added over time. It’s going to help you get up, get set up or get caught up with strong foundational accounting books. Um, we use it to help make decisions. We use it to help predict cash.
Stephen: [00:02:02] And cash pinch points. What you’re going to have, if you’re buying inventory and you’re waiting to get paid for it, you’re going to run out of cash at some point. Wouldn’t it be great to know? You know, it’s not great that it happens, but it’s great to know when it’s gonna happen so you can plan for it. You can make different decisions based on real solid information, historical information that you keep building. That’s part about quickbooks online is our CPA signs right in and does his tax voodoo right through the system and so I don’t have to hump it over there and we can get a little better rate by doing that. So how do you find out more about it? And again, you should look into it. AMZ accounting, simplified.com forward slash, podcast I’ll say it again, amz accounting, simplified.com forward slash podcast check out all the different modules.
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Stephen: [00:05:07] Well, one of the tools that you can use this scope, you could check out their product and then check out their competitors and find the keywords that are competitors are using and check out theirs and see that they’re not, and then say, okay, I’ve got an idea. Let me do this. Let me enhance your brand. That’s the thing you can bring to the marketplace. When you can enhance the brand, you’re going to win that account, so try it. You get a free trial, but seller labs.com forward slash, scope use the code omentum and save 50 bucks. It’s a free trial. Try it and see if you can enhance the brand. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 380, William Gassner now William, uh, works for a marketing firm that really focuses in on Instagram influencers and what interested me, and quite frankly, the reason I had him on was the current status of influencers and launching a product and a brand specifically.
Stephen: [00:06:01] And I think he does a really good job of helping me understand it because quite frankly, I didn’t. Um, but he really broke it down in simple terms that I can understand and really gives some good examples of what it takes to build a brand today, um, through this kind of network and the costs. I mean, he’s pretty open with the costs and, and, you know, some people would say it’s expensive. Some of the brands would say, man, I’d, I’d spend that every day if I could to get the recognition right. So it depends on where you’re at in your business. Um, but he also gives you some free advice on how to do it. And if you’re not doing it and you’re, you’re launching a brand and you’re trying all the tricks and you’re trying to sneak the algorithm on Amazon and you’re doing all that stuff and you’re not seeing the results, quite honestly, this is, this is, I used my George Foreman example, but his endorsement sold a heck of a lot of those grills, right? People felt connected with him and they felt real. Um, that’s kind of where we’re at. And it’s pretty interesting for him to say that a thousand person, a person who has a thousand Instagram followers could have a lot of influence if they’re the right people. And that kind of makes sense. So I think this is a neat opportunity for us to dig a little deeper and what it takes to build out that brand. And I think William does a great job on it. Let’s get into the podcast.
Speaker 4: [00:07:19] Yeah.
Stephen: [00:07:19] All right. Welcome back to the congresswoman a podcast. We’re excited about today’s guest because I think the subject is so current and, um, I think, uh, having an expert talk us through some real life examples of what’s happening out there in the private label influencer world. I mean, this is very, very current. Lots of people talking about it, but I want to find somebody who’s doing it so we can really get some great advice. I want to welcome William Gassner. Welcome William [inaudible].
William: [00:07:46] How’s it going, Steven?
Stephen: [00:07:48] Going really well. Really well, we’re both on the east coast, uh, today. Uh, usually a California guy and I’m always on the east coast. Um, but today we get to talk at a reasonable hour. Uh, I was thinking about that. I’m like, Oh man, what time is it where he is? But fortunately you’re here. Okay. So, so let’s talk about this. So walk us through your background of how you become, you know, something you know, in marketing, but I mean, how, how you get involved with Amazon that did, you know, it’s relatively new, so you have to have a history way back.
William: [00:08:20] Yeah. So honestly, for the past decade, I’ve been actually making websites myself doing freelance work and also selling my own ecommerce products. Um, oh yeah. So a few different products I’ve been selling randomly started selling my first product actually when I was 13. Um, which kind of got me into the whole game selling at some farmer’s markets and art fairs. Um, but then since then have evolved into a few different other product industries and started selling them with a few of my buddies who actually have now become my cofounders of, uh, our company’s stock influence. So,
Stephen: [00:09:01] well let’s, let’s just stop, take a second cause I’m thinking about this. So when you, before you started the company, you, you created products and you were selling products, I assume on Amazon or any of the other platforms, whatever, right. Or even out on Google. Um, what were some of the challenges you ran into? Cause, I assume hence the reason the company came along. But I’m just thinking about what you ran into because it’s, it’s gotta be squared or cube now because years ago it was easier to sell than it is today because of competition and data and all the rest of that stuff. So I’m just trying to understand what, what got you thinking this way?
William: [00:09:35] Yes. So what are the biggest issues? Honestly, is driving traffic to either your website or Amazon listing when we were selling on Amazon. Um, and that’s kind of how we actually got into influencer marketing in general is getting some of other social media profiles to really promote for you and bring in traffic, um, was a great strategy that helped us really succeed with a lot of these product brands. Um, and yeah, because Google used to be really effective, but now there’s so much competition and depending on your niche, it’s really hard to kind of get up high on Google rankings. Uh, and depending on, you need a huge advertising budget to really dominate the first page as well. Um, Facebook has become a good strategy, but also becoming very competitive. Um, so that’s really how we got into influencer marketing in general was we found really a lot of success with it. Um, and the ability to really increase our online traffic and, and so
Stephen: [00:10:36] that’s, yeah. When you think of influencer, what was the first influencer that you would think of somebody influencing advertising? Can you think of somebody way back?
William: [00:10:47] Um, honestly. So if your listeners don’t know what influencers are, maybe they, they do or don’t know. Social media users who are willing to promote a brand, product or service on their social platform in exchange for a monetary payment or a free product or some type of cross promotional benefit. Um, and depending on the amount of followers a social media user has and their consumer reach, engagement and concern, conversion rate can actually vary. So there’s now a few different terms for influencers. Um, most people know of an influencer as a celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers. So you could think of Kim Kardashians or some big time celebrity. Um, but now there’s become these much smaller influencers, which the term is called micro influencer, which is who we’ve really focused on, in, found the most success with in the entire ecommerce game. Um, and those micro influencers who are social media users with the round one to 50,000 followers. Um, and why those are really much more effective for ecommerce, which besides the financial expenditure of paying a lot of money for someone who has millions of followers, um, micro influencers, they’re following base, really consists of a mixture of closest associates and loyal fans who really love the niche that the micro influencer is posting about. So they have high engagement levels compared to much larger influencers. Um,
Stephen: [00:12:19] yeah, nobody’s listening to Kim Kardashians. I mean, you know, I’m sure a million people see it, but the readership and the engagement is probably, I can’t imagine she’s having a conversation back with many people.
William: [00:12:31] That’s exactly right. That’s fine. Micros are really, they’re engaging on the comments and, and since they’re following base is kind of small, a lot of them are family or friends, so they really trust the opinions being put forward. Um, and, and they’re also, like I kinda mentioned before, willing to post for either just a free product or a across promotional benefit without really getting paid or if they are getting paid, it’s going to be a low cost as opposed to think, so I’m like, Kim Kardashians are charging like a million dollars or something or hundreds of thousand dollars a post, which can’t even fight. It’s like you want to talk about,
Stephen: [00:13:10] I think it in a second because I think there’s an ethical, you know, boundary and where, where do you find people? Are they, are they staying within it? But I’m going to go back because when I was thinking, when I was originally asking, my first question was I was always thinking about the George Foreman’s of the world, right? Remember the George Foreman Grill that he endorsed that, that, I mean he licensed his name or whatever, but he literally got up there every single commercial and said this thing’s the best thing since slice bread, that kind of thing. And people bought it because he was likable, believable. And you want it to be like George, right? Yeah. That, that style, I mean that, I don’t know. That’s like one of the first ones I think about. I mean, I know back in radio, you know, celebrities used to read the ads, you know, and, and even I do it in podcasting, right. Read ads, you know, and it’s services that I use. I won’t have anybody on that I don’t use or I don’t endorse the credibility though for social media influencers really only started, I mean, how many years ago would you say it really like took a hold
William: [00:14:13] pretty recent, honestly. Um, three to five. Yeah. Yeah, I would say five years. It’s been kind of this real explosion of, of influencer marketing being a really prevalent force and, uh, um, consumer outreach I would say. Um,
Stephen: [00:14:32] and is most of it Instagram? I mean, if, if we’re generally talking about influences, it almost is. I mean, do you know what percentage it is?
William: [00:14:40] I actually don’t know the exact percentage, but I would say our personal campaigns rely at least 80% on institute.
Stephen: [00:14:47] Okay. So 80% on Instagram. And when I think of Instagram today,
Stephen: [00:14:52] right now, but maybe this, you could help me understand this. I’ll go to youtube first cause I think this is even easier to understand. I recently notice all these quasi celebrity starting their own youtube channels. And I think of these real estate guys, for example, all of a sudden these real estate, um, uh, million dollar listing people, I think there are four of them now that have their own channels. I don’t know why I see this stuff, but I’m thinking about that that didn’t exist even six months ago.
William: [00:15:20] Is that not tubes really exploding recently
Stephen: [00:15:23] when I’m thinking about Instagram, I used to think that Instagram was only the, the, the bikinis and the blah, blah, blah. Right? That kind of person. But that’s not the case anymore. Is that correct?
William: [00:15:35] That is. That definitely is, it kind of used to be this egotistical. Uh, and uh, now it’s really evolved to where kind of people have totally, um, moved away from a lot of Facebook. And even snapchat is really, it was exploding recently and then has been dying down because if you may have seen Instagram really copied over their exact feature, they have this little story promotion feature now. Um, and at least most of the people I know have really moved all of their content promotion and just average people just telling, showing about their lives have moved to Instagram as their main platform. Um, so it is now becoming, and for brand itself, it’s like if you don’t aren’t promoting on Instagram, you’re, you’re kind of losing out on a huge opportunity to reach new customers and promote your products.
Stephen: [00:16:33] Now, when I think of Instagram in an, in an advertiser like that, they’re not pitching their stuff, right? That’s the mistake. If they do pitch their stuff, nobody’s going to see it. Nobody’s going to want to care about it, right? But if I knew the guy who was making my shoes and I actually got to see his story and saw him hammering the nails and had been making my Italian leather shoes, that’s a story I can connect with, right?
William: [00:16:56] Is that gives you that background into, uh, into people’s real lives, you know, and, uh,
Stephen: [00:17:03] for the advertisers. So that’s what people
William: [00:17:06] exactly. Hmm. You individually and um, cause they want to have that personal touch. And that’s kind of where, um, there’s actually a few articles that have recently been written about how the influence of these huge mega influencers, that’s it like called number celebrity influencers is really dying off because what the lives that they’re promoting, no one can really relate to. And you want to see that realistic back story of not only your friends and your closest associates, but to the brands that you’re following. And
Stephen: [00:17:40] that is that related to the aging of the Instagram user. Because, you know, I, I keep hearing from my, like my, my 20, I think he’s 20 year old son, can’t remember, can’t keep track. Um, he, uh, is doesn’t to Facebook. I mean they just have no interest in it. And he’s either doing Instagram and he’s doing it. Yeah, no, it’s Instagram period. That’s pretty much what he’s doing. His Instagram. Um, and is that, so is there a generation that you would look for? So if I’m interested in reaching his generation, clearly it sounds like I have to go to Instagram.
William: [00:18:14] Yeah, no, definitely. Um, most young, I would say around 20 to 30 year olds are predominantly now strictly on Instagram. They’ve mostly evolved out of Facebook. Um, I feel Facebook’s really just one. Facebook now owns Instagram, so they’re, they’re going to be all right. But they, the, the platform itself as Facebook I feel is staying alive just on a basis of connecting friends. Um, I mean, I personally still use it just to kind of reach out and message some associates that might not Facebook. Yeah, exactly. On Facebook, but for any social promotion, it’s, I’ve, I’ve found that it’s predominantly strictly to Instagram.
Stephen: [00:18:57] So what’s your advice then? If, so if Steve wants to build a brand, right? And this is where this whole conversation is going to go to. I just, I just want to make sure that we capture that. Instagram is, is aging in leap years though, because it’s, it’s, it’s exponential aging, right? It’s, you know, even though it’s only a few years that everybody’s been using it, people are growing past it. Right. And so, like you said, it’s maturing where that big influence her isn’t as important as the hair salon in my town. Right there a place where I get my haircut, that’s a story that I can follow because I can connect with them in a way I’ve never been able to connect before. Just so powerful.
William: [00:19:36] No, that’s, that’s the real power of it is that some small time person or a small time company can really make a huge impact and reach thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people through Instagram, which wasn’t possible before, honestly.
Stephen: [00:19:53] Yeah. And likeminded. Right. And, and, and find them. So, so if a brand is looking to get started, I mean, is your advice then, you know, uh, Facebook’s nice and you have to have your own website of course, but you know, really Instagram someplace you’ve got to, you’ve got to blow it out.
William: [00:20:10] I would definitely agree with that. I think a main focus should be on promotion on Instagram. Um, and one cool feature they’ve now integrated is that anytime you create an Instagram post, you have the ability to actually share that post with the other social platforms. So onto Facebook, onto Twitter, onto Tumblr. Um, and how I actually have been running a lot of my personal brands is focus just on creating Instagram posts and then just re share that content onto the other social platforms because they’re really not that relevant anymore. But it also to have some type of presence on them is valuable. It just kind of shows that you’re hitting all the bases in a sense. But to really focus on Instagram is the best strategy I’ve found. Um, I think others, does Google,
Stephen: [00:21:04] uh, looking at Instagram at all? I mean, do they index any words? I mean, if I put a posting on an Instagram is, it’s searchable in Google and I don’t know. So I’m naive about this.
William: [00:21:13] Um, yeah. And there’s some other software companies that do indexing. Um, so if you, every time you create a post, it will show up. Not when the on kind of Instagram slash year profile. But also there’s a few of these other companies that are really taking all these Instagram posts are just scraping Instagram and those will get promoted as well. So it could definitely assist with some Seo as well.
Stephen: [00:21:39] Um, and that’s the key. Correct. I mean, if you’re going to do all this stuff, if you’re going to spend the money on influencers, which we’ll talk about in a second, you’ve got to have content, right? I mean, I always listen to Gary v, content is king. Content is king, right?
William: [00:21:53] Yup. And that’s leading into influencer marketing. It’s, you can, by using influencers, you can generate a huge amount of user content that you can reuse for all your different marketing materials. So could not agree more. The more content you have, the better. Because people want to have that relatable, um, vision of people that they can actually, they’re similar to, in a sense.
Stephen: [00:22:19] So you have a service, it’s called Steck influence. And Steve does not benefit in one way other than, uh, other than Williams sharing his information with us and then we all benefit. So, so, you know, uh, he, he’s, uh, he does sell things and so I’m going to let him pitch it stuff, but I wanted to bring the information because this is such a current subject for people building a brand because one of the big challenges, and you know, this is the, um, the cloudiness on Amazon, right? There’s just so much product, right? If you go look up silicone spatulas, I don’t know how many gazillions they’re going to be, right? Everybody’s done them, right? So how do you stand out? Right? And so we all know the game on Amazon about keywords and advertising and all that kind of jazz, but the real outliers have brought it off of there.
Stephen: [00:23:04] And they have started to drive their own traffic. Because again, if I drive someone to my silicone spatula there, the only, I’m the only by box they see, correct. Yup. Right? So period. Right? So that’s the goal, right? Is I want to bring them to only see mine. And so they don’t even know that there are other options. I’m the only one. Right? And that’s the way to do it. And so let’s walk through the process that you guys do because you have services that offer these things. Um, and it, to me, what was interesting about when I went out and did my research on you is the approach. It’s not just a, hey, what do you want to do, Steve? You know, because if I knew that I quite frankly William, I wouldn’t need you. Right? And so I, I need help and I need advice. So you guys have a kind of a, I don’t know how many steps, a six step, I guess it is process. So let’s start with step one and then work our way through.
William: [00:23:56] Yeah. So, uh, what we first do basically is figure out what your brand is, what your total knee market is, and then we help, we have the software that actually taps into different social media APIs and can source every influencer we need that’s really targeted at your specific niche. So we actually have access to about 10 million influencers
Stephen: [00:24:23] and what they specialize in. I mean, or what, you know. So give me an example. Okay, now narrow that down for me.
William: [00:24:28] So we can find them based off specific hashtags, for example, and geographic ranges. So we’ll basically do a broad range search on it. I saw water bottle,
Stephen: [00:24:40] so let’s get specific, or I want to add value here. So I sell these metal water bottles. They’re beautiful.
William: [00:24:45] Their love. Yup. So, uh, for example, we do a hashtag search of maybe hashtag runner, right? Because runners now like water bottles and then we’ll find, actually analyze their posts themselves and uh, see if they would be a good candidate to actually be promoting water bottles in general. And then we’ll reach out to them and actually vet them. So make sure that they have the right following base. They’re in the right area, they have their kind of consumer bases, the right demographic and see if they’re actually interested in this water bottle. In general. Um, most of our campaigns work where we just exchange a free product for a social posts. So most of the time we don’t pay our influencers, they just get a free product. So they need to really want the product in order to be involved in our campaigns. So we’ll do all of that, vetting, all of that outreach.
William: [00:25:42] Um, and we’ve actually developed a complete management software that kind of onboards our whole influencers and brings them through the entire process from getting the product and putting it all there in specific shipping information to actually posting and what their requirements are. So early on, we actually had a lot of trouble with this. Um, if you’re in a suit, you’re doing, yeah, it’s, especially when you’re dealing with a few hundred influencers and in a short period of time, like a month, um, if you only wanted to run a campaign where you had three or four influencers, it’s pretty straightforward just sending them the products. But when you really bridge that up, they can become very complex and influencers have a lot of questions depending on what the product you’re selling. Um, especially when we’re kind of dealing with some like more supplemental products or like supplement products or vitamins and stuff like that. Um, health benefits and things like, and then from just even shipping logistics, it can get extremely complicated and also making sure that the people even do their task. So making sure that they post on time that their posts have the correct information. Um, all of that can be very tedious and difficult, which is why we developed this whole management software.
Stephen: [00:27:03] And so they, over time, they earn your trust. And so, you know, uh, I mean I would assume that, you know, the next water bottle guy, uh, you put it out to these 12 people and none of them or six of these people felt followed through and did what they said they were going to do and vice versa. Right? Everybody did what they were supposed to do. Those six now make it in your database. They get a little star next to them and so they’re now, you know, when, when the next guy comes along, you have somebody that you can kind of trust, right? Is that kind of how it works? SORTA.
William: [00:27:31] Exactly. Correct. So we can, we’re besides our, um, API access to really source and influencers, we’re now creating an entire community of what we call the vetted influencers who have already worked with us. They trust us and we know that they’re great candidates to use for our future influencer campaign. So exactly like you mentioned, we kind of star them, write some notes about um, how well they performed their campaigns. We also try to survey all of the influencers we work with, so asking that what other types of products they may be interested in. Um, and that gives us the ability to now future people who come to us, we can really direct them and reuse, um, or retarget them to our existing user base.
Stephen: [00:28:21] Yeah. When, when I’m thinking about, you know, this approach, so I’m bringing a water bottle product and I come to you for help. Um, what, what, what would your recommendation be? I mean, something as broad as a water bottle and that’s what’s so hard, right? It’s something that, you know, there’s only 3 million of them for sale on Amazon, right. And they all happen to hold water. So guess what, they all have that in common. So to stand down in that world, right, I don’t have the Yeti name recognition or what have you. So is is the product I’m bringing going to affect the number of influencers and the reach that I need to, I mean, it sounds so stupid when I say it. Of course the answer’s gonna be yes, but, but maybe, maybe you can explain how you, how you help us understand that
William: [00:29:06] differentiate. Um, yes. So honestly, obviously you want some kind of special feature to your water bath to be successful. We have the reality on being on Amazon in general. It’s like if you have a good product photo, some really good key words that are going to get you the right ranking, you can find success, um, pretty efficiently. But now with certain products where there’s so much competition, you want to be able to differentiate yourself. So that’s where getting a huge amount of user generated content is super valuable. And to kind of have those people really posting ideally reviews on your listing, showing what types of cars that they use your product in. And kind of the different ways.
Stephen: [00:29:55] All right, hold on. Your products. This is, this is legit because you know, if I’m going to give them a water bottle, I can’t have them give me a review. That’s 100% of its terms of service. Okay. All right. So we’re not saying that. Please don’t say that, cause that would be against terms of service and none of us want to jeopardize our business there. Okay? Sure. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
William: [00:30:17] Beyond their own accord. And it’s if they liked the product, right. We’re not at all facilitating or encouraging our influencers to actually post reviews. It’s, it’s completely organic. So if they enjoyed what they used, um, and they decide to then actually give us some type of review, I’m saying that’s an extra value. Differentiate yourself from the other sellers. Yeah.
Stephen: [00:30:43] There’s no inference that they need to do that. Right. That’s, that’s the key. Right. All right, so it doesn’t come back and bite you because that’s it jeopardize your business. Oh, definitely. That’s, that’s some hot water that we do. But if they’re out there on Instagram, all right, so let’s go back through this. I want to make sure I’m getting this right. So they’re, they’re putting a post up saying this is, this water bottle is the best water bottles since you know, Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah because of this feature, right? Whatever my unique feature is, as you said, I really need something unique. There are posting it in their group where they have influence. Do I see sales as a result of that or do I gain traffic as a result of that? Or maybe both.
William: [00:31:26] Honestly, both. So one you’re going to of course get that High Rez image of them promoting your product, which then you can use for other marketing initiatives like advertising or just marketing materials. But then usually since we’re kind of focusing on these micro influencers and they’re, like I mentioned before, they’re following is very engaged and kind of close associates. They’re usually going to trust what these micro influencers are posting about and kind of take their suggestions. Um, and so that actually will generate a lot of traffic to the Amazon listing or website, whatever you’re trying to promote, um, which then will increase hopefully sales. And uh, and yeah, that’s basically kind of the strategy
Stephen: [00:32:17] is it make more sense to have an Amazon page or a standalone landing page. Um, you know, just to have a place for somebody to go to generate traffic.
William: [00:32:28] Honestly, either one is as effective. Um, the Amazon page itself can be legit because we actually will sometimes promote or have our influencers become Amazon associates or not. Oh, Amazon actually has this new influencer program themselves where people can get a cut of the sales that they promote. So directing them to actually are providing influencers with a link that’ll give them an affiliate percentage of sales is a great tactic to kind of increase your listing traffic while also mutually giving the influence there. Uh, some
Stephen: [00:33:09] and that’s the only place where you gotta be really cautious about a review because obviously Amazon knows who they are and they know they’re an influencer. They know they probably were given the product. Um, and there’s nothing wrong. You can give a product away, correct. Yeah. Yes. I just cannot request a favorable over you or a negative or you can’t request it at all. Okay. Yes. Okay. Correct. Okay. All right. Well that’s cool. So, so what does, what’s an expected cost? I mean, does it change depending on the item? So let me say I’m selling a customized surfboards, right? Very thin, very specific market as opposed to back to my metal water bottle. Is that significantly different because, uh, you know, to get, uh, to get any legs with a water bottle as opposed to a customized surfboard, the right has to be drastically different.
William: [00:33:58] Oh, death. Um, ideally the best products that work for influencer campaigns are kind of in the 20 to $50 range, honestly. Um, because you can kind of, you can give them out at mass scale as opposed to some customized surfboard that may cost you a few hundred dollars to just make, um, in those scenarios, honestly, maybe working with a larger influencer could be a better strategy just because you’d only have to give away one or two and get that kind of same outreach. Um, so that’s kind of, I would say the difference between really the best strategy is to focus on, um, using influencer campaigns for just smaller, cheaper, cheaper products.
Stephen: [00:34:48] How many would you say it was normal for AI?
William: [00:34:52] Um, so we usually start out with a are kind of trial packs are about a hundred. Um, and that’s about the standard of getting enough traffic and a publicity for our brands. So, and the kind of advantage to that is like when you want to hire some, you’re going into influencer marketing in general. Um, a mega influencer on average has a few hundred thousand followers, whereas the micro may have only a few thousand so or sometimes just like 800. Um, so if you’re getting, if you can get a hundred of these micro influencers, let’s say each has 2000, now you have a total reach of 200,000. So you’re getting close to mega influencer range, but now you’re diversifying your risk, right? Because now you are dealing with a hundred different people, more time expenditure. But if the quality of the post isn’t that great for 10 of them, you still have 90 posts that are really great. Um, and you also now, as opposed to a mega influencer where you only get one piece of content to reuse their marketing material with a hundred people, you now have a hundred. Um, so that’s kind of the real advantage there.
Stephen: [00:36:08] So I get to say, you know, this product was endorsed by Bob the skater, or what? I mean, I’m bad bed. They met, I don’t know anybody payments like that, but I mean, somebody’s endorsed by, you know, smart money, smart passive income, Pat Flynn, right? Or something like that. Right. That would be an example. And so that gives me the credibility. Now you said that most, or I’m reading this to that, then a lot of this stuff has a product sales that come along with it. What’s the return? You know, I know this is gonna be the question, what’s the return of investment? Right? So I’ve got to give away a hundred products. She just said, William and I’ve got to ship them. So now it’s getting really expensive, right? So it’s not only my cost of goods, now I’ve got to pay to ship them. Um, that sounds pretty expensive. However, uh, if you see product sales, so what, what, what has been your experience?
William: [00:36:53] So the sales in the very short term, um, art massive, but over the long term, they actually are very effective for our clients, um, because not only with the brand building but actually just as people start to share them. And word of mouth gets around. Um, our clients really see a huge increase in their listing sales and then ranking, um, which results from the sales. So we actually also track, um, all of the engagements that are influencers, um, provide. So engagements include likes and comments, um, on each post. And then we analyze also our influencer, um, influencer’s audience, breaking down their demographics and geographic range and then calculate what’s called an IMB or an influencer monetary value for our campaigns. Um, and that value is calculated based on the average value associated to a social engagement, which takes into account the social impressions, their comments, their likes, and, and then that enables us to really give our clients, um, in Roi on their investment. But we also use some tracking measures to figure out how our posts are leading to specific sales or how many people are going through the posts into, um, actually their Amazon page or their website, their landing page. Um, but we’ve found that are kind of campaigns are really about longterm strategy. Um, and about brand building in general.
Stephen: [00:38:32] We’re thinking about that when you’re saying that the opportunity for something to go viral when you have one person, you know, it’s possible, but when you have a hundred like you’re describing, the opportunity for, to, to get some legs is spread. I mean, significantly as I was sitting there thinking about it, it’s, it’s logical that if I’m doing something barbecue related and I’m now talking with a hundred barbecue enthusi nuts, right. The people who are really insanely into that, the chances for something to get, you know, shared a lot. Like you said, and go a little bit of viral is as much greater. How much does something like that cost to get a hundred to get a hundred influencers? I don’t give me an it depends.
William: [00:39:15] Yeah. Um, right now we’re charging, so we charge a management fee or influencers. So our campaigns cost $75 for her influencer. So a hundred would be 7,500. Um, and that’s basically, it’s a decent fee, but it’s what we have to charge to actually deal with the expenditure of managing all of these people. So the, so the Amazon sellers would have to pay that management fee plus also the expense of the product that they’re going to be giving away. Um, and so that’s, that’s basically how well one of the big issue
Stephen: [00:39:55] who’s, I mean, cause everyone’s gonna say, wow, that’s a lot of money. Okay. So, but if you pay any ad agency or anything, that’s nothing. Right. Cause they usually take a big percentage when I’m sitting here saying, is that one of the hardest thing? That’s what I’m trying to, trying to Google. How many Instagram, uh, uh, users are out there, right? How many, how many Instagram, you know, a 77.6 million and that was 2000. Oh No, it’s going to surpass 111 million in 2019. That’s crazy. 111 millions yet. Now the problem is how many of them are real, right? How many of them are bots? How many of them? That’s what you got to pay you guys for, right? You’re doing, you can, I mean, can you guarantee that 100% of your influencers are real?
William: [00:40:40] Yes, we can. So we actually have a software that we use to make sure that we don’t have any fake influencer profiles. Um, but that is a serious issue in industry is that it’s pretty easy to get some thoughts are so fake followers and really make a facade that you’re, you’re a huge influencer, but really 80 90% of all of your followers are fake. Um, but we can some more
Stephen: [00:41:06] stats for us. This was 2018. This is interesting. 70% of Instagram users have fewer than a thousand followers. 15.7% have between one and 10 and 5.7 have above are over 10,000 to 50,000. Um, so that’s, that’s a pretty small group of people. When you think of it now, I mean it is out of 111 million. So as a percentage, I mean it’s still, there’s still a lot, but then to get within that and slice it down to fall to find that, that must take some effort. And so you guys have software that does this for you?
William: [00:41:40] That’s exactly right. Um, so we, we have some programmers on our team that have developed these softwares to really mass scrape and then more of that and filter, um, influencers based on exactly what we need. So they’re following base kind of their niches like I mentioned before. Um, and that’s, that’s where running your own campaigns can be decently difficult if you’re trying to kind of do it at scale. Um, but if you’re only looking for a few posts to kind of just get a word out and get a few pieces of user generated content, it’s manageable. Um, but, uh, yeah, that’s where the software is that we’ve developed are, have really come into play. And, uh, initially early on in our companies developed, we ran into huge amount of issues just finding people and uh, and finding the right ones. Um, and like you said, the fake followers and we’re really big issue for us initially. But now with our total betting software, we can a bypass those problems.
Stephen: [00:42:45] Yeah. I’m just thinking about, um, every business I go into now says follow us on Instagram followers on Instagram. Even at the local, I’m just thinking of our little coffee shops and, and, and little restaurants around town. When I do that, well the answer is going to be, it has an effect on me cause my wife’s like, oh yeah, we have an event today. And I’m like, what are you talking about? And she goes, yeah, we, uh, she must be following something. Like, are you kidding? They’re tracking us. And they’re like that. They were finding things that we would be interested in and messaging to us as we’re sitting in our living room, like sun them. Because I purposefully try not to watch ads, but it’s working, right?
William: [00:43:22] Yup. The, the tracking is insane these days where you can figure out, people will just direct you to go to the your website just to put a little, it’s called a tracking pixel on your, um, on your browser basically. And then from then on, whatever websites you go to, uh, as long as you’re kind of logged into Gmail or Google or even Facebook, you’re going to see these ads pop up. And uh, it definitely gets scary because yeah, you’ll, you’ll be talking about something and searched at once and then, uh, all of a sudden you’re now seeing bombarded by a range of different advertisements trying to upsell you on that same product.
Stephen: [00:44:02] Yeah. And, and I, and I think there’s so much dilution, so let’s, let’s be realistic here. So whole bunch of people listening to this right now, we’re like, Steve, I can’t afford that. But that doesn’t mean the camp. This is a long play. And William, you got to look at the long game here, right? You got people that are trying to develop a brand new, never know when they’re going to hit one out of the park. So you got to look for long. How about giving away some free information and let’s help some people how they can kind of start doing this on their own to get started. And so when they’re ready to tackle a, a, um, a larger program, then they, they’ll realize, hey, it’s a lot of work and that’s why you need a company like yours. Um, how about that? Can you do that?
William: [00:44:38] Yeah, I can definitely do that. Okay,
Stephen: [00:44:40] let’s get started then. So somebody who wants a, they got their product, they’re selling silicone spatulas and they want to get Steve Silicone spatula out there. Let’s start from the beginning.
William: [00:44:49] So right away, honestly, make sure you first have started a social media profiles, right? How many times have you seen that, right? Yeah, no. Do you have nothing? And then you try to start outreaching and that’s difficult. So you want some type of presence already to make people kind of trust you and then they can see your products. And, and what you’re offering. Um, so once you have your Instagram set up, um, the suggestion is to right away, actually Instagram has their whole search feature is based off of hashtags. Um, so as I kind of talked about earlier, start searching specific niche hashtags. Um, and then you can direct message these, uh, accounts that you find based on these hashtags. Go from there.
Stephen: [00:45:36] Give us an example. So let’s stay in my silicone spatula. So what would you suggest that I would search for or what would you search for in your mind?
William: [00:45:43] I would do a bunch of different cooking hashtags. So cooking lover is this proud of glee, Insta, Cook, um, and things along that range. You can go big and then go very specific. Um, but anything that related to cooking obviously or cooking ware. And um, Instagram will also, once you do one search, it’ll actually suggest a bunch of the top other hashtags that are related to that. Um, so start clicking on kind of all of the top range ranged hashtags that you find and then go into the posts. Um, start looking at what they’re following base is, what the quality of their content is. Make sure that they’re kind of posting very good photos. Um, and then once you find your ideal customer influencers, um, there’s a feature where you can actually direct message them directly on Instagram. Sometimes they’ll have an email in their profile, in which case you could actually reach out to them through email.
William: [00:46:44] But, um, through Instagram and you can message them and ideally you ask them, hey, um, this is my brand, this is my product. You can check it out on my posts. And a, would you be willing to, um, promote my product in exchange for getting, getting a free one? Or if you have some sort of marketing budget, I’ll offer you, here is a monetary payment for, uh, for promoting this. And keep in mind what, well, go ahead. I’m just going to ask a question. I was going to say, uh, um, what we kind of brought up before about just the ethics or you brought up of posting. There’s actually the government agency, FTC, um, created this new law now where you have to, if an influencer is posting about some product, they actually have to disclose that it’s an advertisement or a sponsored post. So you have to always keep that in mind is to let your influencers know that, hey, tell your audience that this is sponsored. But even I’m just giving him a bottle, a free bottle that’s sponsored that is still sponsored quid pro quo.
Stephen: [00:47:49] Right. There’s an expectation for something. If I gave him something, okay, I just wanna make sure that that’s clear. It doesn’t have to be money.
William: [00:47:55] Yeah, no, it’s uh, they’re promoting something that someone reached out to them and ask them to do. Um, they have to disclose that which comes down. I think that’s very ethical. You know, you want to, um, in this day and age you can really brainwash people into buying a lot of things. Um, and to really disclose that to your audience. And people don’t necessarily care though, even though it’s sponsored, it’s, they still are interested in what, especially with yeah.
Stephen: [00:48:23] Gets, but I appreciate the honesty and the candor. I think this is a place where I was going to go ethnically too, is that you can make some mistakes by giving your product and giving it to the wrong type of person. To me that, that could be just as serious today. Right. Um, because if they’re sleazy, sketchy, you don’t want them representing your brand. Right?
William: [00:48:42] Oh, definitely. Um, there’s actually, I read this book that talked about, uh, some brand promotions or brand companies sending products, their competitors’ products to other, um, to p two different like celebrities who were really not very good, um, ethically or just like good for the promoters. So as an example, do you ever remember a Jersey shore that show? So, uh, there was some, I think it was related to somebody there, so that’s why, that’s why I never seen the show. However, their wife is related. Somebody, yeah. I rarely watched it too, but I got some influence and do it. Um, but there’s that character on its Gnocchi who like, people didn’t really like, or she was kind of a interesting character to say the least on the show. Um, and I think it was some product, it was Gucci or Prada that or vice versa. They, they sent either Prada or Gucci to sneaky as like a free free product giveaway. Um, but they did it as like a negative advertising campaign. So to make people not want to buy their competitors’ product, cause this celebrity that people didn’t think,
Stephen: [00:49:57] oh yeah, they don’t want, if she likes it, then I wouldn’t, I’m on it. Oh, I get it.
William: [00:50:01] Um, and there was another example on that specific, these show, I think it was, uh, the situation or whatever that guy’s name. Um, I think it was American Eagle. He was wearing a lot of their clothing and they ended up paying him, um, to not wear their products. That’s funny. So, uh, there’s definitely that factor in an influencer marketing is you can get negative publicity from, uh, from sending it to the wrong person or kind of a backlash. So you definitely want to make sure that you’re working with the right people and they’re, they’re audience is right in your customer demographic and, uh, and that they’re going to do a just job in promoting your own
Stephen: [00:50:45] brand. How do you look for legitimacy in that? Because what you’re saying makes sense. I mean, when I look at somebody’s profile, I mean, am I, you know, I guess maybe it’s the obvious stuff, you know, are they fake? You could tell that they’re fake. Um, but what’s your advice to little Steve starting out with a silicone spatula? How do I, how do I identify the best,
William: [00:51:05] best person to work with? Yeah, so to, like I said, we have kind of this total automated software that really figures out if someone’s profile is fake, but as just a person going into this to really figure out if someone has fake followers, um, if you go into their following base, you can actually see who is following, click into a few of their profiles. And if they have, if they’re following, let’s say thousands of profiles or just a large amount and have no one really following them. And also usually fake profiles, we’ll only have a few photos, you’ll know that, that now that person is actually buying a lot of fake accounts. Um, and that’s kind of the standard of what a fake account looks like. And then also based there, um, following on the, on the influencer profile itself, look at their following base and then go into each one of their photos itself and see how many likes they have.
William: [00:52:03] So they shut at least have 1% of their following be liking, um, on their photos. So if they have 10,000 followers, um, a hundred people should, should be liking each one of their photos. Um, and if not, what does that tell you? It really tells you one, they’re not engaging with their followers or most of their followers are fake. Um, so ideally you want kind of these high engagement levels where when someone, cause even profile some profiles that have a thousand followers may get 500 likes on a photo, sometimes even a thousand if they’re using hashtags correctly. So those people are extremely engaged, they’re following base, loves what they’re promoting and those are the real people you want to work with. Um, and when you see someone who has 40 likes on a photo and they have a few thousand followers, that’s not someone who is going to be a good representation for your brand.
William: [00:53:00] Um, also just kind of photo quality. Um, if, if someone’s promoting really good photos, that means they’re taking their time on their influencer account and uh, and really care about their whole identity online. Um, so that’s kind of a, another key to look out for. And just also one other thing is just how many photos they’ve posted in general and kind of how frequently they post. So some people don’t post for months and that’s also not a good indication of someone you want to work with. Do you want people who are at least posting once a week, if not multiple times a week. Um, and that’s kind of a, that will is a symbol of that they’re really angry
Stephen: [00:53:41] gage or knows that these people, but it’s a job, right? I mean it, he and I have a pretty big Instagram following it. It’s, it’s work. I mean, I got help, thank God for Ashley. I got help because I couldn’t do it by myself and my son helps us too. And it, it just, and we can’t keep up. And so these people who do that, they put a lot of effort and energy. So you, you do kind of give them that. Um, I think it’s more socially acceptable as long as it’s not the, the bikini stuff, you know what I mean? I think that there is, there was a time where that was the thing. Now that’s kind of passe for brands. What did I read? 70% or 80% of all businesses are using Instagram right now. I think I’ve read that somewhere. That’s crazy stat. So let’s, let’s close it up with this because again, most of the people listening here, we’re going to be selling on Amazon, right. And they’re trying to figure out a way if they don’t put their products and and deal with Instagram influencers or any type of influencer, their competitor is correct.
William: [00:54:41] That is correct. Yeah. Um, especially, yeah. Nowadays that’s one of the main ways to really differentiate yourself. Um, and as many you get a lot of youth, like I’ve mentioned a few times before, the user generated content is invalid. I get other people, like real life people promoting your product and then you can use those photos in your Amazon profile as that I found has really, really can differentiate a brand from just someone who has a blend product, photos and your example.
Stephen: [00:55:14] Well, of that thousand people, that person who has a thousand followers and they get 500 engagements, there were a celebrity in that thousand group. Right? I mean that, that’s a, I mean, think about it. Imagine if a, if a thousand people heard of you and 500 of them comment, you are, you are the number one in that group. You are a major celebrity in that thousand percent group. So for you to recommend and then indoors, um, really that’s what it is. It’s an endorsement that goes a long way. I get that. I that, that’s very clear the way you said that.
William: [00:55:46] Yup. No, that’s exactly right. Is that the people who people are really engaged with these small hall, small influencers now, like they’re, they’re kind of becoming these small time celebrities in a sense, which is a weird reality that we’re living in now. But uh,
Stephen: [00:56:05] yeah, you’re seen on TV. I mean think about like, and I think about this all the time, you know, we don’t, we don’t have, right. Oh we do have cable and it was on for the Superbowl and the Oscars. That’s the last time we put it on. And there are days we have Comcast and it’ll say it’s been 17 days since you signed in or whatever. And it literally tells us that and you’re like, Yup, cause I have no interest in. What if I didn’t have to get it? I wouldn’t. But if forces you, if, because of the Internet anyway, then I think about the hundreds of channels. Cause when I go in there, there’s so many channels. It’s so diluted that audience. How does anybody effectively advertise in that marketplace without targeting me who is an ecommerce seller and a podcaster and a retired guy, right? How do they reach me? I’m a bad example for them. However, you know, if a Casey Neistat posts something, I see it now. He’s a big example, but it means still because I’m interested in the photography side of it or whatever. Right? Or a podcasting thing. John Lee Dumas, it’ll be good one. Right. I’m interested. So I see things like that. Um, in today’s world, this is really pretty much it if you really want to reach somebody. Correct. It is a, this is the,
William: [00:57:12] in new new marketing world we’re living in is, is really predominantly based on social media and when people live on, on their phones now, which is crazy.
Stephen: [00:57:21] Yeah. And they’re buying on their phones and we all know that. So as Amazon sellers, okay, so, so we understand that the easy way to do this is to, is as William suggested, go out and start researching in that. Now, if you’re a scaled a business and you’re looking to, you know, to, to really grow and you want to grow quickly, then you got up by time as we always say. And so then therefore services like stack influence, that’s the name of the company. Steck influence. Um, it’s stack influenced.com and there’s a, they have a phone number there. You can start with a 15 minute call. The call is free, I assume it is. Okay. The call is free. Um, and uh, I’ll put the number in the episode here. Um, what, what’s next? What do you see? You know, cause I’m thinking about this, I mean, this is, you know, it’s accelerating. Like we said, the Kardashians and those other influencers, they’re kind of getting a little more passe on the smaller level. What’s, what’s, what do you see next? Because that, that’ll start to roll and catch up, right?
William: [00:58:20] Yeah. Um, honestly, as you mentioned earlier in this podcast, youtube is becoming a really great avenue for marketing promotion now and we’re seeing a lot of our influencers starting their own youtube channels. As you also kind of brought up, um, cause just video content is, is really the next frontier is a either short term or even long form video content. People are really being engaged with. Um, another extreme valuable addition to the videos is that Google owns youtube, right? So it kind of helps. So there, uh, when you get some good keywords on your youtube videos, you’re really showing up high in Google rankings. Um, and then it’s also great for just if you have a website for your search engine optimization strategy. Um, so we’re seeing a lot of people moving towards the kind of video space and we’re also, um, promoting a lot now a video content creation for influencers.
William: [00:59:25] So we’re running some different competitions in our campaigns where, um, our influencers can actually make some money or when a some type of award for the best video that they promote and whether it’s product recommendation video or just something very creative. We’ve seen some influencers do really sweet stop motion videos and our, our clients are loving them. Those because one, you could also post those on your Amazon profile as just a little explanation video, but also can then take, reuse those videos and compile them and make some type of youtube content or create a total a youtube channel yourself. Um, so I see that kind of as the new frontier of, uh, where this is all moving. But I also see just in general for influencer marketing is that micro influencers are really taking off. It’s a four on the ground floor. Yeah. It’s a small time.
William: [01:00:25] People are becoming the new age celebrities. Um, and because they’re so neef specific, right? It’s like, like you, you said you’re following, you’re, you’re actually looking at different profiles that you’re really interested in these specific products or specific topics. Um, so if you can be, if you could be someone who’s the master at this specific niche, you’re now a celebrity in that realm and the Kim Kardashians of the world are losing their power because they’re spreading themselves too thin and kind of people can’t really relate to them as well. Um, they’re not, they’re promoting a lifestyle that is unattainable to most people. Um, so that’s kind of where I see the world of influencer marketing moving is really towards these micro influencers. Um, and uh, yeah,
Stephen: [01:01:18] that’s a good news. It’s not too late because I’m sitting here thinking, you know, I always see people, it’s not, I just saw Alex Rodriguez started a youtube channel and he’s doing some coaching or whatever for business because he’s a pretty big businessman. And you think to yourself, why would he start? I’m, I’m sure he’s getting wooed by youtube to start one. However, his level of influence, he’s in control of his future. This is just the beginning. And so to me, that’s why this, that’s why I agreed to have you on, because again, I think this is so timely. What William Saying here is not far fetched for any of us. Um, and if you want to be an influence or even cooler, if somebody wasn’t influenced her and they wanted to get involved with you guys, how do they reach out? The same way. I’m going to give him the contact, it can reach out that way.
William: [01:02:00] They can and a on our website we actually have a menu tab called creators where they can sign up right there. They kind of give us their social media link and a little bit of information about themselves and they can apply to our program. That’s cool. That’s cool. All right, so
Stephen: [01:02:20] stack influences the company stack influenced.com in his email isWilliam@stackinfluence.com and I will um, put links out here on the episode. William, I really appreciate, um, I appreciate you taking the time and indulging in my stupid questions just because you know the old dudes. So it’s a little, it’s a little harder for me to get, um, that’s why I related to George Foreman. But to be honest with you, it’s more of the same old. It’s really the execute or the person who can really pull it together. They seem to be the outliers. Everybody has access to it, but the person who does it right really seems to be the one winning.
William: [01:02:57] Yup. You’re completely correct. It’s a few. You can find the correct niche and you really engage with your user base, your, the, the new age celebrity and you’re going to really quickly generate a engaged community, um, and can start honestly amazingly making a living off of it. And a lot of times it’s cozy. Yeah. It’s a content creators are becoming kind of the new, uh, remote work occupation. Um, and it’s just people promoting specifically on Instagram. It’s amazing you can actually make a living off that these days, but it’s totally possible that and especially as micro influencing marketing really evolves. It’s going to be calm, even more prevalent.
Stephen: [01:03:43] Dude, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I wish you nothing but success.
William: [01:03:48] Thank you as well, Steven. Pleasure talking with you.
Stephen: [01:03:51] Great Guy. A great story of, um, what it is today. You know, it fascinates me that this stuff is existing and it fascinates me how fast it’s changing. You know how fast the Kardashians came in and out of favor there 15 minutes while you know the sister can create $1 billion brand. So I’m not downplaying it, but the reality is their ability to influence the market is waning. Um, and that’s interesting to me. So how do you stay ahead of it? Well, you got to get to the people that want your product. How do you find them? You got to keep slicing and dicing. We used to call it peeling the onion back in the accounting world, right peel layer by layer by layer. And I think we did a really good job of explaining what it takes today. ECOMMERCE, momentum.com ECOMMERCE, momentum.com take care.
Cool voice guy: [01:04:37] Thanks for listening to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found that ecommerce momentum.com under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and the lake us on iTunes.
